Here it is!!!!

This is my entry to the event:

http://simpleindianfood.blogspot.com/2008/05/think-spice-think-cardamom-event.html 

Ingredients:

1 cup Rava

1.5 cups sugar

1.5 cups water

1 cup milk

1 tsp Cardamom powder

A pinch of food color

1 spoon of rose water.

2 tbsp of ghee

Method:

Fry Rava in 1 Tbsp Ghee and keep it aside.

Fry sugar slightly and add water to form a light sugar syrup.

Add Rava, Cardamom, food color, and rosewater.

Keep stirring.

Add milk and keep stirring.

As the mixture turns into the consistency of egg ehite (that is what I can think of ) add remaining ghee and turn off the stove.

Then, enjoy Rava kesari.

Variations: You can add raisins, cashews, pinapple chunks etc.

Around V Day I went to La Madeleine’s Bakery and Cafe for a work meeting with a really nice person. He was kind enough to order a capuccino and a Raspberry Cheesecake, huge as it was in the shape of a heart [since my right brain is disabled, I will use the same shape too], just for me. When people order stuff for me to eat, I feel cared for. I have to mention that at this point I had completely given up on caffeine related products and I have never liked Raspberry or Cheesecake. But I finished both of it, because what was supposed to be a 30 minute conversation turned out to be a 2 + hour discussion. I never felt time pass, clearly I was having fun

That has been the only time I had eaten raspberry so far….

And here comes the event http://ammaluskitchen.info/2008/05/01/announcing-afam-raspberry/

Ingredients: 1 Litre of Milk

2 Tbsp Sugar

1 spoon of Rosewater

1 pinch of Saffron

1 Tbsp of Ghee

Raspberries

Directions:

Boil the milk with Saffron

Add sugar, rosewater, and ghee.

Once it becomes semi-solid, lower the flame.

This, by itself is very tasty. I moved it to a seperate dish, forgetting all about raspberries.

Now, I remembered the event and wanted to go and buy organic raspberries and a heart-shaoed cookie cutter. But my husband was trying to "SAMPLE" this for quite sometime. I literally had to push him away and hide this in the freezer before I left to buy the fruit.

Then this happened:

When I wake up in weekends and come down the stairs to the kitchen, I don’t think of a healthy breakfast, just some garbage out of my refrigerator. This time, a really unusual thing happened. I saw ripe mangoes and an almost life expired bell pepper that I had bought at a premium price for its freshness and organic nature were staring at me and making me feel really guilty.

I had to do something to use both of these. Here goes:

Ingredients: [please note: I decided to ditch the green capsicums to avoid the strong raw taste, plus they did have a shine that told me I could have one more week of less guilt because of the green ones ]

Place a pan on stove in low heat and toast the onions without oil:

Add red bell pepper sliced like in below:

After frying for while, add cubed ripe magoes:

Cover with a lid and kind of let it cook on low heat for 5 minutes or till your 5 year old daughter comes down hungry

Then, just serve it like in a 5 star hotel like this:

If you are lucky you get a re-do for next day’s lunch like this:

If you are really lucky to get a husband like mine, then you get to eat fancy gourmet lunch like this on a MONDAY with him in your house like this:

But can any "one" be as lucky as sending the post to 3 online events like this?

This is what they say in tamil as "Orey kallula moonu maangaai," which translates to Befalling 3 mangoes with a single stone throw at the mango tree, to illustrate the point you get 3 times the expected result for a single effort = Meaning I am blessed.

http://arundati.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/wbb22-announcement-may-mango-madness/

http://creativepooja.blogspot.com/2008/05/lets-celebrate-completion-of-2.html

http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2008/05/macaroni-salad-and-anouncing-mbp-may.html

Last Friday I had gone to Sowmya / Vidya’s [ http://blogwithadifference.blogspot.com/ ]  place for a swim and dinner with my daughter [I thought it was a girls only swim until I spotted dear Swami and his wife, then missed hubby]. Technically, it was just for a swim, but since I was there, they decided to feed me, nothing unusual for us.

Vidya had made this AWESOME pineapple rasam I tasted for the first time in my life, and I was immediately a die-hard fan of her cooking. I took the recipe from her. Also found one from Singing Chef [ http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2008/01/pineapple-rasam.html ] and another from Jugalbandi [http://jugalbandi.info/2007/03/pineapple-rasam/].

I liked Vidya’s the best since it was easier with fewer ingredients, obviously I am the lazy kind.

Here is the picture of the Ingredients:

1 Pineapple

2 tbsp Masoor dal boiled with 5 cups of water and trumeric (any lentils will do)

1 Tomato

1 sprig of curry leaves

2 tsp of Rasam powder

2 Green chillies

1 tsp Pepper powder

oil, mustard, and urad dal to tamper.

Salt too.

Cut 1/3 rd of the fruit into slices, V and Singing Chef used chunks, since I am pretty jobless, slices will do.

Puree the 2/3rd. (Couldn’t take more pictures step-by-step, was on phone with another bud).

In a pot, tamper urad dal, mustard, curry leaves, chillies, and tomato in oil, in that order.

Add rasam powder, pepper, and salt.

Add boiled lentils with water.

Add Pineapple puree.

Allow to boil.

Add slices of Pineapple.

Add Ghee. [Optional]

Serve hot.

My entry to my muse’s event http://chefatwork.blogspot.com/2008/05/macaroni-salad-and-anouncing-mbp-may.html